The Supreme Court may be hearing a case whereby if you sell something that you purchased, the product name will still be owned by the manufacturer. So, if I would like to sell my Athearn stuff at a flea market, yard sale, E-Bay, etc., I will have to pay a percentage to the original manufacturer because the original product name is connected with the item.
Athearn, or any other company, would still have the right to collect a fee because their name is still attached to the engine for example. It is my understanding that this is to protect product ownership,.In other words, they still have a hand in it.
I guess we will see the flea market police driving around making sure that the fee is paid. E-Bay will be monitored by the Internet police to make sure that Athearn or any other company is paid. It is called, “Protection of Ownership”; the original producer of the product will still be entitled to make money off the product and protect its name.
This would be outrageously ridiculous and would limit your rights as the legal owner of the product. Quite interesting to see what legal advisors come up with to extort money from their customers. Wouldn´t that money be better invested to improve the products?
The case was covered on both CNN and FOX, they mentioned the case based on a student that bought text books for college cheaper off campus then sold the books on E-Bay at a cheaper price but made a profit. The publisher filed a law suit and WON!
It was turned over by one court the re-instated by another court. Now it has gone to the U.S Supreme Court. It is my understanding this would affect all manufactures and their products to safe guard the product rights and the name. It does not apply only to publishers but all manufacturers.
The case involves a publisher suing an importer who was buying their books overseas at a discount and then reselling them in the US at a profit. Their argument is what opens the door for any copyright holder to prevent resale of virtually anything. You can bet the entertainment industry will be at the forefront of this mess.
This has come about due to technology and the internet opening up a world wide flea market and the owners of the flea market receiving a profit. The original manufacturers are realizing that people are not buying new items when they have access tohundreads of slightly used items from places all over the country.
This is simply a way for manufacturers to raise the price ofthe used item in order to make their new item more competitive.
If the court rules in their favor, then lawmakers should imediately either:
Prohibit manufacturers from placing their names or logos on the item they sell…or
raequire manufacturers to place the name of the company that actually produced the item…
Cameras, tv’s, computers etc… would have about 2 names associated with their product, rather than the dozens of names they are marketed under and distributed by…
In the case of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, an appellate court recently ruled that it is illegal for a person to resell things that originate from a foreign country without the express consent of the copyright or patent holder. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on October 29.
At issue in the case is the first-sale doctrine in copyright law. This doctrine allows a person to buy things and then resell them without having to pay royalties to the intellectual property (IP) owner. According to this doctrine, the IP owner is only entitled to royalties from the first sale of the product. This doctrine has been upheld by the Supreme Court since 1908.
Supap Kirtsaeng discovered that Wiley, a producer of textbooks, was selling their texts overseas at greatly reduced prices compared to domestic markets. Kirtsaeng had his relatives in Thailand buy up large quantities of Wiley’s textbooks and ship them to him in the U.S., where he then resold them on E-Bay, undercutting Wiley’s own domestic pricing. The appellate court ruling now forbids consumers from enjoying the low prices on textbooks at which Kirtsaeng was offering them.
As noted the last time you tried to stir up a hornets’ nest on this, that case deals with black market or gray market items and has nothing to do with resale of model railroad products which were originally purchased through legitimate channels.